A brush with Feroz Khan

Raju Korti
500 years before the legendary Mohammed Rafi was born, William Shakespeare is reputed to have said that a rose is a rose is a rose. Even if called by any other name, it would smell as sweet.
This small piece of literary history came to fore so resonating and how! And it needed the somber reflection on the past of a good-looking actor called Feroze Khan, who lost his battle with cancer in Bengaluru a decade back.
Among the spectrum of stars rising from relative obscurity to the portals of commercial fame in the early sixties was Feroze Khan. No one had the slightest misgivings about Feroze’s talent as an actor, but you had to hand it to him for his musical instincts.
I had met the actor a couple of times fleetingly and never had the opportunity to talk to him on many of the songs – most sung by Rafi -- during the sixties and early seventies.
On a professional commitment to Amby Valley (a picturesque locale between Mumbai and Pune) on one hot and humid afternoon, I drove with the handsome Khan. The event was occasioned to herald the crushing season of the wine festival.
FK didn’t bother to mingle with anyone. He just chose to recline in a quiet corner nursing a glass of South African wine. We had been discussing some formal gibberish when abruptly I decided to test his memory. Slanting his head towards me, I just hummed the first line of a song pictured on him. FK already looking redder than the wine in his glass paused and shot back: “Ah! Reporter Raju?” he said with a smile, happy to pun on the name of one of his earlier films. “I am not a reporter any more, I am the editor”, I shot back jovially.
A few quick sips in that sweltering heat were already having their effect. He blanked me by putting his large palm on my mouth as he caught on to the song “Gussa fazool hai” (Reporter Raju, 1962). “My vote goes for “Jaag dil-e diwana” (Oonche Log) he quickly retorted. Running his fingers on his bald pate he said, “You know I am one of the only two actors in Hindi cinema for whom Rafisaab has yodeled. I consider it an enviable landmark in my career.”
Just to test him a little, I asked him if he remembered a film called Mai Wohi Hoon. “Of course, I do, he replied his eyes now bloodshot. I had two gorgeous solos in that film “Aankhon pe palkon ke ghunghat” and “Bahut haseen ho bahut jawan ho”but try as he might, he couldn’t remember the composer (Usha Khanna). The quintessential hero that he was, it wasn’t surprising that he could remember his heroine Kum Kum with whom he sang an unsurpassing duet “Aa jaa re mere pyaar”.
If FK was embarrassed with the kind of films he did then -- one of them was Samson -- he wasn’t so with a duet from that film “Ek baat hai kehne ki aankhon se kehne do.” But I had opened a can of worms. He just went on and on with his films like Tarzan goes To India, Suhagan, Bahurani, Char Dervesh, Suhagan and Teesra Kaun. But one mention about Ek Sapera Ek Lutera and FK spun into his emotional spiral with two solos “Hum tumse juda hoke..” and “Tera bhi kisi pe dil aaye..”
I lost him after the crowd caught up with him. The only aside in that conversation was his aversion for film journalists. “Whenever they want to meet me, I tell my secretary: Saale ko ek daaru ki botal de do aur dafaa karo.” My only takeaway was he didn’t offer me one.